On March 4, Kenya will hold elections and I’d like to ask you to start praying NOW! In 2007, horrible violence spread across the country as tribes fought against each other following the elections. The politics in Kenya are heavily tied to individuals tribes and this resulted in thousands of people being injured and killed. Eldoret, where we live when we go to Kenya, suffered severely and people that we know and care about saw and experienced awful things. We know people whose family’s were burned alive and also know people who risked their lives to rescue strangers.

Many of the Americans that live in the IU Compound have left the country as directed by IU, but we know that some people will not leave and many Kenyan’s can’t leave.

It’s worth mentioning that one of the men running for president in Kenya, as well as his running mate, are on trial in the International Criminal Court on allegations of organizing violence and crimes following the last elections.

Please pray for these specifics:
That the elections would be peaceful.
For our friends that remain in Kenya (to name a few: Joe and Sarah Ellen, Javan and his family, Pam and her brother Elly and their families, Rahab and Josie and their families)
For the Americans that will return to Kenya after the elections.

I’ve included a couple links below that you can check out for more information:The Stone’s Blog: Chrissie and Geren are dear friends of ours from Eldoret. They are leaving for Uganda tomorrow until after the elections.

We received word tonight that Eden’s humanitarian parole was granted! We haven’t made any plans yet (or even talked about it because Ben and Eden are still sleeping!) but we’re excited here and will post updates as we have them. Praise God for the AWESOME things He is doing!

I just got some good news from Susan at Little Angels! Well, first she toyed with me and gave me the bad news: the national committee STILL didn’t hear our case in their meeting on Wednesday. Their backlog apparently goes back to last April. Susan heard of this at 9am on Wednesday, though, so she quickly wrote up another letter for the Little Angels committee that was also meeting on Wednesday afternoon. She listed out all the extra steps we did, the headache from the national committee, etc. And they did it! They approved Eden “clear for adoption” and approved us as able to adopt! It would have been nice if they had given us this approval 6 weeks ago…or even 4 weeks ago after we got the paperwork they asked for! I’m super happy they did approve us though, the backlog from the national committee is not looking so good.

Next Steps:
Our lawyer takes this letter to court next week and hopefully is seen on a Certificate of Urgency (2 days wait instead of 3 weeks). This first hearing is the appointment of a Guardian Ad Litem. This person is supposed to come visit and observe how amazingly wonderful we are with Eden, how she is thriving in our home, etc. We then have another court hearing 1-2 weeks after that where the guardian and a little angels’ social worker present their reports and (hopefully) the court grants the adoption. Its unclear if we have to go back to the national committee at that time or not. If we do, well, hopefully they’ve worked through their backlog! Worst case scenario is that we have to wait 3-4 weeks for the first visit, then 3-4 weeks for the second visit, then 4-8 weeks for the national committee…but thats where the humanitarian visa would come in: we could at least come back for a little bit to see Meghan/Andy/Gracie/family in the middle of all the waiting.

Our lawyer wasn’t able to move the date to get our travel order (Tuesday, October 18) so we had to reschedule our visa interview. We are now going to the embassy on October 24 at 9:30am. Thanks for praying for the process and for a successful meeting!

The time has come to pray like you’ve never prayed before! On Monday, October 17, we have our visa interview at 9am. (That’s 2am for most of you, so pray hard before going to bed next Sunday night).

We are still waiting on our travel order- a critical piece of documentation- but hopefully that will be ready next week. Our lawyer didn’t realize our visa appointment was on the 17th, so he scheduled to hear the verdict on the travel order for Oct. 18. Please pray with us that he is able to get in to see the magistrate next week, since we can’t go to the interview without it.

Otherwise, we have all of our supporting documents gathered together. I’ve gone over the information they are looking for countless times, and feel pretty prepared. The big thing is that they need to know we will return to Kenya. We obviously plan to come back, since we need to finish Eden’s adoption, so we hope that won’t be an issue.

Last time the visa process seemed easy but we’ve heard that they are more selective with the visas now and the process has changed since we applied for Eden’s two years ago. Please pray that we will have all of our documents, that the kids will be lovely while we wait and are interviewed and that the consular officer will recognize how important it is that we ALL come home for Gracie to be born .